SuperHero Training Academy: Crafting the Ultimate Centaurian Curriculum

In superhero narratives, the journey from ordinary to extraordinary is often marked by a transformation normally depicted by a training montage. Last week, we explored how to train our brains to adapt to superpowers, extra limbs, and enhanced senses, drawing from the work of David Eagleman and his concept of Livewired -- the plug-and-play aspect of our brains and how they can create new capabilities. We showed through the work of Steve Swink and his framework to create and understand 'Game Feel', which immerses you in an experience to learn complex skills. This goes beyond mere gamification; it's about immersing oneself in the experience, feeling every aspect of the task. 

"The tactile sensation of manipulating a digital agent. The thing that makes your mom lean in her chair as she plays Rad Racer. Proxied embodiment. Game feel."

Steve Swink: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/game-feel-the-secret-ingredient

But how do we elevate this concept into an ultimate training curriculum for our aspiring superheroes?

To answer this, we turn to the insights of Max Bennett and his seminal work on the evolution of human intelligence. Bennett identifies five major breakthroughs in our cognitive development, providing a blueprint for understanding learning and intelligence. While his analysis stops short of exploring non-human intellects (octopus)—a topic for future discussion—it lays the groundwork for our superhero training academy's curriculum.

Breakthrough #1: Steering and Associative Learning

"These bilateral body plans simplified navigational decisions into binary turning choices; nerve nets consolidated into the first brain to enable opposing valence signals to be integrated into a single steering decision. Neuromodulators like dopamine and serotonin enabled persistent states to more efficiently relocate and locally search specific areas. Associative learning enabled these ancient worms to tweak the relative valence of various stimuli. In this very first brain came the early affective template of animals: pleasure, pain, satiation, and stress..."

Bennett, Max. A Brief History of Intelligence (pp. 359-362). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

The inception of intelligence began with steering—a fundamental ability to navigate. This basic navigation system, driven by simple valence states, enabled early creatures to move towards desirable outcomes and away from adverse ones. It marked the beginning of affective emotions and associative learning. The ability to navigate the physical world is the start of intelligent behavior and learning.

Breakthrough #2: Reinforcement Learning

"Five hundred million years ago, one lineage of ancient bilaterians grew a backbone, eyes, gills, and a heart, becoming the first vertebrates, animals most similar to modern fish. And their brains formed into the basic template of all modern vertebrates: the cortex to recognize patterns and build spatial maps and the basal ganglia to learn by trial and error. And both were built on top of the more ancient vestiges of valence machinery housed in the hypothalamus. This model-free reinforcement learning came with a suite of familiar intellectual and affective features: omission learning, time perception, curiosity, fear, excitement, disappointment, and relief. "

Bennett, Max. A Brief History of Intelligence (pp. 359-362). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

Next, we delve into reinforcement learning, the process of repeating behaviors that yield pleasure and avoiding those that cause pain. This model-free self-reinforcement underpins much of AI research today, offering a framework for training AIs to accomplish tasks. However, the challenge of credit assignment, or recognizing which actions lead to success, necessitates a more sophisticated approach. In complex games like Chess and Go, deciding which moves finally lead to winning is hard to determine.

Enter the actor-critic models and the basal ganglia, introducing trial-and-error learning complemented by spatial maps. This combination enhances learning and integrates curiosity and exploration, which are vital for overcoming complex challenges. 

In the realm of artificial intelligence, particularly within deep learning models, these breakthroughs have significantly enhanced their ability to learn. Reinforcement learning still could not solve certain complex puzzles. Even though DeepMind had used deep learning to learn many Atari games, one eluded them -- 'Montezuma's Revenge.' DeepMind's solution marked a pivotal advancement in AI's problem-solving abilities by embedding mechanisms that incentivize curiosity and exploration.

DeepMind’s video explaining how they solved Montezuma’s Revenge

The introduction of curiosity and exploration to the AI algorithms mirrored the evolutionary breakthroughs by adding a whole suite of emotional-affective states. The additional emotional responses, including disappointment and expectation, enabled more complex learning, solving complex multi-step learning tasks. Essentially, what we developed is akin to a sophisticated motivational GPS, equipping it with the ability to navigate through the intricacies of the world. This system plays a crucial role in solving the credit assignment problem, as it employs this motivational framework to prioritize actions based on 'wanting' in addition to the traditional 'pleasure/pain' dichotomy.

Introducing an extra system to focus on wanting propelled by dopamine to guide navigation and decision-making processes signifies a monumental leap in learning development. This system empowers creatures to 'anticipate' future outcomes and leverage basic spatial maps to decipher and respond to a complex array of cues. Such a motivational design system elevates the ability to interact with and understand its environment and enhances learning efficiency by aligning its goals with dynamic incentives and expectations.

The Motivational GPS by Kes Sampanthar at Gamification 2013

Breakthrough #3: Simulation and the Power of Anticipation

"Sometime around one hundred million years ago, in a four-inch-long ancestral mammal, subregions of the cortex of our ancestral vertebrate transformed into the modern neocortex. This neocortex enabled animals to internally render a simulation of reality. This enabled them to vicariously show the basal ganglia what to do before the animal actually did anything. This was learning by imagining. These animals developed the ability to plan. This enabled these small mammals to re-render past events (episodic memory) and consider alternative past choices (counterfactual learning). The later evolution of the motor cortex enabled animals to plan not only their overall navigational routes but also specific body movements, giving these mammals uniquely effective fine motor skills."

Bennett, Max. A Brief History of Intelligence (pp. 359-362). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The final component of our curriculum puzzle is simulation. With the development of the neocortex, humans acquired the capacity to plan and foresee future scenarios, developing advanced "simulation software" to navigate the physical world and the domain of abstract ideas. This ability extends beyond mere reaction to the present, utilizing memories and predictions to prepare for future events. Initially, the introduction of place and grid cells for navigating the physical environment enabled the application of basic 'mapping functionality' to devise a map-making system within our neocortex. Jeff Hawkins' "10,000 brain theory" posits that our neocortex consists of thousands of columns, essentially serving as mini-maps. These maps are not limited to representing the physical realm but also enable us to conceptualize the abstract world of ideas.

This breakthrough stage also allowed our ancestors to master fine motor skills and more complex tasks. Bennett doesn't get into mastery, but adding rewards around mastery allowed creatures to not only master complex tasks but especially humans, allowed us to bootstrap our minds. We are born with the same number of genes as grass, but we learn a whole suite of complex skills, how does this work. Looking at a baby's development stages, you see how a built-in curriculum allows us to master a sequence of tasks with increasing difficulty. Each step is driven by a new goal and our mastery circuit, which kicks in for us to practice. With this last element, we have created a fairly robust learning protocol, turning us into predictive machines capable of learning to navigate the physical world and the world of the abstract.

GSummit SF 2012: Kes Sampanthar - Motivational GPS: Understanding the Science of Motivation

The last two breakthroughs are 'Mentalese' and 'Language' -- we will cover these in future articles, especially as we build on the idea of language and the complex theory of mind.

Bennett summarizes beautifully how humanity’s story through two acts leads to the sophisticated learning curriculum that is intertwined with our bootstrapped intelligence:

"... humanity's story has been a saga of two acts. Act 1 is the evolutionary story: how biologically modern humans emerged from the raw lifeless stuff of our universe. Act 2 is the cultural story: how societally modern humans emerged from largely biologically identical but culturally primitive ancestors from around one hundred thousand years ago. While act 1 unfolded over billions of years, most of what we have learned in history class unfolded during the comparatively much shorter time of act 2—all civilizations, technologies, wars, discoveries, dramas, mythologies, heroes, and villains unfolded in this time window that...

An individual Homo sapiens one hundred thousand years ago housed in her head one of the most awe-inspiring objects in the universe, the result of over a billion years of hard—even if unintentional—evolutionary work. She would have sat comfortably at the top of the food chain, spear in hand, warmed in manufactured clothing, having tamed both fire and countless gargantuan beasts, effortlessly invoking these many intellectual feats, utterly unaware of the past by which these still yet-to-be-understood abilities came to be and also, of course, unaware of the simultaneously magnanimous, tragic, and wonderful journey that would eventually unfold in her Homo sapiens descendants."

Bennett, Max. A Brief History of Intelligence (pp. 359-362). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

Summary: Building the Ultimate Learning Program

These breakthroughs offer a comprehensive framework for developing a superhero training program that transcends traditional learning paradigms. By harnessing the principles of moving toward pleasure and away from pain, reinforcing trial-and-error learning, and simulating future scenarios, we can create a curriculum that equips individuals with superpowers, additional limbs, and enhanced senses. This is not just about physical prowess and mastering complex skills, as depicted in Marvel’s Hawkeye TV Show, but also the basis for learning complex mental skills -- Chess, Go, math, and creativity.

Our SuperHero Training Academy, inspired by the evolutionary milestones of human intelligence, is poised to revolutionize how we approach learning. By integrating motivational design with a deep understanding of our cognitive evolution, we can unlock the full potential of human and superhuman abilities, preparing us for our Centaurian futures.

Next Week: Pucks, Pixels, & Tentacles: The Wild World of Learning from Ice Hockey to Octopuses

In next week's article, we will delve deeper into the intricacies of training and learning, building upon the foundational insights of Fortnite's building wars history and how rapid skill acquisition occurs. We'll explore the fascinating evolution of different brains, such as that of octopuses, to shed light on the concepts of multi-brain and collective intelligence. Our journey will also revisit the mechanisms through which our brains acquire and refine complex skills in the rapid-paced environments of table tennis and ice hockey. Examining these distinct yet interconnected topics aims to enhance our understanding of how we build the capabilities to be Centaurians.

Exclusive Deep Dive

Due to the overwhelming curiosity and flood of questions 🤔💡 from you all, I've taken a monumental leap to bring you an #exclusive #deepdive 🤿 into the captivating world of Centaurian principles.

🔥 Your enthusiasm inspired me to delve even deeper into the fascinating world of cognitive science and artificial intelligence. I'm thrilled to announce the release of my latest exclusive piece for our paid subscribers!

🤿.In this comprehensive deep dive, I've meticulously summarized key training principles and addressed some of the most intriguing questions raised by our community:

• 🧠 What exactly is the "credit assignment problem" in learning processes?

• 🎭 Demystifying the actor-critic model: How does it drive decision-making and learning?

• 🌐 Exploring the brain's GPS: A closer look at place and grid cells.

• 💡 Unveiling the secrets of the motivational GPS: What fuels our drive?

• 📘 Diving into Jeff Hawkin's groundbreaking 10,000 Brain Theory.

• 🏆 The "mastery circuit" decoded: How does mastery really work?

• 🎁 #Bonus for Subscribers: Get exclusive access to my research paper on Motivational Design, where I explore the intricate mechanisms that inspire and sustain motivation.
  

This article isn't just a response to your questions; it's a journey into the core of cognitive advancements and our understanding of intelligence. If you're as passionate about these topics as I am, this article is for you.

✨ Join our subscriber community today to unlock this deep dive and many more insights waiting to be discovered. Your support fuels this work and propels the conversation forward, paving the way for new discoveries and understandings.